Linda B. Buck, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for deciphering the workings of the sense of smell, has retracted two scientific papers after she and her colleagues were unable to repeat the findings.
The retractions, which did not concern the work for which Dr. Buck won the Nobel, were published Thursday on the Web sites of the journals where the papers appeared. One had been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, the other in the journal Science in 2006.
“I sincerely apologize for any confusion that its publication may have caused,” Dr. Buck wrote in the retraction of the Science paper.
The retractions follow a separate one, two years ago, of a paper by Dr. Buck that was published in the journal Nature in 2001.
For all three papers, which looked at the olfactory system in mice, the first author was Zhihua Zou, a postdoctoral researcher who conducted the experiments. Dr. Zou worked in Dr. Buck’s group at Harvard Medical School from 1997 to 2002 and then followed her to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. She continues to work there, but he does not.
A review that Harvard started after the earlier retraction to investigate any possibility of misconduct was continuing.
None of the retracted papers were the basis for Dr. Buck’s Nobel Prize, and the findings did not significantly change scientists’ understanding of smell.
“In the field of olfactory neuroscience, it’s a minor event,” said Charles J. Wysocki, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
After the Nature retraction in 2008, Dr. Buck and her colleagues revisited other papers based on Dr. Zou’s experiments. “They were unable to reproduce key findings in both papers,” a statement from the cancer center said.
In addition, figures published in the 2006 article were inconsistent with the original data, the statement said.
Dr. Zou agreed to the earlier Nature retraction but said in a statement at that time that he was “disappointed.” He did not admit to any wrongdoing.
A spokeswoman for the cancer center said Dr. Zou told the editors of Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that he would not sign the latest retractions.
After leaving Dr. Buck’s group in 2005, Dr. Zou became a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He left in November 2008, one of 2,400 employees, including 120 faculty members, who were laid off after Hurricane Ike devastated the city and the university.
Dr. Buck did not respond to a request for an interview. Dr. Zou could not be located.
The retractions, which did not concern the work for which Dr. Buck won the Nobel, were published Thursday on the Web sites of the journals where the papers appeared. One had been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, the other in the journal Science in 2006.
“I sincerely apologize for any confusion that its publication may have caused,” Dr. Buck wrote in the retraction of the Science paper.
The retractions follow a separate one, two years ago, of a paper by Dr. Buck that was published in the journal Nature in 2001.
For all three papers, which looked at the olfactory system in mice, the first author was Zhihua Zou, a postdoctoral researcher who conducted the experiments. Dr. Zou worked in Dr. Buck’s group at Harvard Medical School from 1997 to 2002 and then followed her to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. She continues to work there, but he does not.A review that Harvard started after the earlier retraction to investigate any possibility of misconduct was continuing.
None of the retracted papers were the basis for Dr. Buck’s Nobel Prize, and the findings did not significantly change scientists’ understanding of smell.
“In the field of olfactory neuroscience, it’s a minor event,” said Charles J. Wysocki, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
After the Nature retraction in 2008, Dr. Buck and her colleagues revisited other papers based on Dr. Zou’s experiments. “They were unable to reproduce key findings in both papers,” a statement from the cancer center said.
In addition, figures published in the 2006 article were inconsistent with the original data, the statement said.
Dr. Zou agreed to the earlier Nature retraction but said in a statement at that time that he was “disappointed.” He did not admit to any wrongdoing.
A spokeswoman for the cancer center said Dr. Zou told the editors of Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that he would not sign the latest retractions.
After leaving Dr. Buck’s group in 2005, Dr. Zou became a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He left in November 2008, one of 2,400 employees, including 120 faculty members, who were laid off after Hurricane Ike devastated the city and the university.
Dr. Buck did not respond to a request for an interview. Dr. Zou could not be located.
